The Senate's second-ranking Democrat introduced a bill Thursday that
would eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powdered
cocaine, an issue that has frustrated judges, civil rights advocates
and drug reform proponents for more than two decades.

Under current law, it takes 100 times as much powdered cocaine as
crack to trigger the same mandatory minimum sentence. Activists say
that disparity disproportionately impacts African Americans.

"The sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has
contributed to the imprisonment of African Americans at six times
the rate of whites and to the United States' position as the world's
leader in incarcerations," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)
said in a statement. "It's time for us to act."

Durbin's bill would also increase the quantity of crack cocaine
required to trigger a mandatory prison term, as well as stiffen
penalties for large-scale drug traffickers and violent criminals.

Some law enforcement officials have advocated eliminating the
disparity by increasing the penalties for possession of powder
cocaine, rather than, as Durbin's bill does, reducing the sentence
for crack.

But those calling for a change in the law also cite economic reasons
at a time when budgets are tight, noting that half of all federal
inmates are imprisoned for drug offenses.

A report released Thursday that shows the number of pot smokers in
the world has grown to more than 160 million people has Canadian
advocates renewing calls for legalization of the drug.

An Australian study, citing United Nations data from 2006 and
published Thursday in the journal Lancet, found that about 166
million people aged 15-64 -- or an estimated one in 25 in that age
range -- reported using cannabis. That's up from about 159 million
people in 2005.

"It's not going away. So should one in 25 people be criminalized for
smoking pot?" asked Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa professor and
spokesman for the Canadian Foundation For Drug Policy. "What this
number says to me is the world is not drug free. Some people prefer
alcohol over cannabis and some people prefer cannabis."

The foundation is urging the Canadian government to legalize and
regulate marijuana, by allowing people to grow their own and taxing
sales the way it regulates alcohol or tobacco.

These are promising times for Colorado's medical marijuana patients.
For years, they've suffered in the dark, desperately seeking only to
follow their physicians' orders to use marijuana to address their
debilitating medical conditions, taking their wheelchairs at
midnight to the streets to purchase low-quality medicine at inflated
prices, or struggling in the difficult and physically-taxing
endeavor of growing it themselves in expensive indoor gardens. But
finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Patients can
visualize a world where the supply of medical marijuana is almost as
safe to obtain as more dangerous and addictive hard narcotics such
as Oxycontin, Percocet, or Fentanyl.

The optimism hasn't come easy. In August, the Boulder District
Attorney's Office prosecuted Jason Lauve, a wheelchair-bound medical
marijuana patient for two felony charges of possessing low-quality
medical marijuana for his own use. While two high-level prosecutors
participated in the four-day trial, these talented attorneys could
not overcome simple facts: Jason was protected under the Colorado
Constitution, which allows him to consume marijuana to treat extreme
pain associated with his broken back.

In addition to understanding Lauve's legal rights, many jurors saw
the light about marijuana's continued prohibition. Marijuana has
alleviated human suffering for thousands of years, is not physically
addictive, does not rip apart internal organs like harsh narcotics,
and presents an all-natural and organic alternative to synthetic
medicine.

After the verdict and an ensuing firestorm of taxpayer outrage,
Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett opened his mind. He said that
it would be better if marijuana were legal outright, and not just
for medical purposes. This is an extraordinary statement from a
prosecutor, and Garnett should be applauded for seeing that
prohibition is a failed policy that only hurts those that have
already suffered too much.

New Zealand is seen as a soft target by gangs, which launder
millions of dollars through this country, says the head of an
Australian police unit set up to combat Melbourne's criminal
underworld.

Detective Inspector Bernie Edwards of Victoria Police told the
Police Association conference in Wellington yesterday that New
Zealand needed to do more to crack down on organised crime.

Mr Edwards heads the Purana Taskforce, set up after a "crisis" of
gangland killings in Melbourne, on which the television drama
Underbelly was based.

New Zealand needed to target organised crime rings, or risk reaching
a crisis point of its own, he said. "Hopefully you realise that you
need to stop it before the problems start. You will get shootings,
you will get killings - if you do nothing about it."

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether the government
needs to make it easier for citizens to claim seized assets; police
and the real experts argued about the actual weight and value of
cannabis plants; some in North Carolina seem shocked by cocaine at
the University of North Carolina; and a British journalist discovers
that there really are legal highs.

WASHINGTON -- Every year, police agencies seize more than $1 billion
of cars, cash and other goods linked to drug crimes. The Supreme
Court will hear arguments Wednesday on how hard it should be for
owners to try to recover that property.

Police typically get to keep much of what they seize, although
owners can fight forfeiture in court. On Wednesday, the central
issue will be whether owners are entitled to a prompt, informal
hearing to argue that they should get their property back while
waiting for a formal forfeiture proceeding that could be scheduled
months or years in the future. At present, some states impound the
property during that lag time and provide owners no recourse.
Critics say many innocent owners just give up during that period,
and states then are free to sell their cars and other items.

The justices will hear a case from Chicago involving six different
property owners, including Tyhesha Brunston, who loaned her
Chevrolet Impala to a childhood friend who was later arrested in the
car and charged with possessing drugs.

"Words can't describe how mad I was" at him, says Ms. Brunston, 30
years old. "He was not supposed to be smoking marijuana in my car."

Illinois law allows "innocent owners" to reclaim seized property.
But in practice they may have to wait months -- or in Ms. Brunston's
case, three years -- before recovering their cars.

Last year, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago
ruled that the Constitution requires that owners get a more timely
chance to seek return of their property.In Texas, some officials
near the Mexican border say the problem of violence spill-over from
Mexico isn't as big a problem as some officials stationed further
from the border insist. Yet, an official from the Mexican side of
the border came to the U.S. last week to remind citizens that our
drug policies are the root of the horrible violence in his country.

Elsewhere, another upbeat story in the prospects for drug reform,
but one expert notes that the mainstream media is still missing
crucial stories that would be helpful to reform.

Supporters of legalizing marijuana and officers charged with seizing
it have different opinions about the drug, but they agree on one
point: It's a valuable crop.

Just how valuable, however, is another point of contention.

With the arrival of fall, growers of the illicit crop are racing to
harvest the plants while law enforcement officials rush to find and
wipe out growing sites. In two recent seizures in Tulare and Fresno
counties, officials destroyed thousands of plants, which they said
were worth $7.2 million.

That estimate is based on a formula used by the state Department of
Justice: on average, each plant would yield a pound of usable
marijuana over its remaining lifetime, and a pound of marijuana is
worth about $4,000 when sold in small quantities on the street.

While marijuana advocates generally agree with authorities on the
value of a pound of marijuana, they disagree that each plant yields
a pound of pot. They say authorities should measure the actual
marijuana seized, rather than make assumptions about a plant's
lifetime potential.

The argument is more than a technical discussion. Larger quantities
generally result in harsher penalties in court.

Keith Stroup, legal counsel for the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, better known as NORML, calls the values
police put on seizures "self-serving."

"I don't think most plants [would yield a pound] at any one time -
unless it's a massive plant," he said. "What would make more sense
would be to weigh the buds," which are the part of the marijuana
plant where the intoxicant, a chemical called THC, is located.

Special Agent Casey McEnry of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency in
San Francisco disagrees.

"We're not weighing the plants," she said. "When I give an estimate,
it's based on how many pounds [a plant] is capable of producing."

CHAPEL HILL - In a college town where booze is king and pot is
popular, the recent arrests of seven current or former UNC-Chapel
Hill students on cocaine charges created a stir.

The charges were unusual -- particularly because two people were
charged with felony drug trafficking. But experts say all this is
not likely an indicator of a surge in cocaine's popularity.

"I haven't noticed a huge problem with it," said Scott Gallisdorfer,
who, as the university's undergraduate student attorney general,
evaluates students charged with crimes to decide which will face the
student honor court. "We don't get a ton of cocaine cases. The vast
majority are marijuana."

During the past four years, the number of students facing honor
court charges for alcohol violations has outpaced all drug charges,
according to the most recent honor court data available.

And a 2008 survey of UNC-CH students revealed a wide disparity in
the use of these vices: 69 percent of respondents said they'd
consumed alcohol in the last 30 days, about 20 percent had used
marijuana in that period and just 2.5 percent had used cocaine.

Still, the cocaine busts last month at a local apartment have been a
hot topic among students and parents. Several students arrested were
in fraternities or sororities, including two women who lived in the
Chi Omega house -- a detail the student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel
pointed out repeatedly in its reporting.

Good Trip? A Personal Investigation into the UKP10m-A-Year Market in
Legal Drugs

How can you get high without breaking the law? A survey of friends
and colleagues. "Smoke nutmeg," said an actor. "Find a dodgy
Starbucks barista who'll sell you the nitrous oxide cans they use to
whip cream," said a banker. "Ask around for something called
Methedrome, or Mephedrone, or Mephedrome," advised an account
manager. "Lick a newt," texted a doctor, "and don't ask me things
like this again." One PR directed me towards news stories about
Spice, an over-the-counter smoking mixture that was reported to have
effects similar to cannabis; a web developer directed me to a recent
issue of Mixmag, announcing the new popularity of "analogue drugs"
such as Mephedrone (aha!) in British clubs.

Something known as "that purple drank" was a favourite of American
rappers in the 1990s, an A&R man told me: "I think it was a mixture
of cough syrup and Sprite and it made everything move very slowly."
A teacher remembered that a fistful of ProPlus worked when he was
younger.

A civil servant had tried snorting Dreft detergent, to no effect.

I was sifting through this jumble of urban myth and murky fact when
a report was forwarded to me by a medical student.

Published last month by drugs information charity DrugScope, the
report stated that "legal highs" had, for the first time, made a
significant impression in its annual survey of drug use. Legal
highs?

The mayor of Palomas, Mexico, was shot and killed after being
abducted Thursday -- an act of violence that sent shockwaves
rippling across the border.

The slaying of Mayor Estanislao "Tani" Garcia was the
highest-profile homicide in a small town better known for luring
U.S. tourists to its pharmacies and shops across the border from
Columbus, N.M. Chihuahua state police spokesman Arturo Sandoval said
initial findings indicate that Garcia was abducted in the morning
and his body was found around 1 p.m. Thursday.

They said he had been shot, but it was not know how many times or
with what kind of weapon.

Officials also said Garcia's burned-out truck was found south of
Palomas near where the body was found.

Two former Gwinnett County narcotics investigators are likely to
face criminal charges for stealing money reserved for undercover
drug buys, a department spokesman said Friday.

Lt. David Butler, who supervised narcotics and prostitution
investigations, resigned July 16 after being confronted about an
unknown amount of cash that disappeared from a safe containing "buy
money." His subordinate, Officer Vennie Harden, also is suspected of
pocketing buy money earlier this year. Harden resigned in lieu of
termination July 13.

Internal investigations into the allegations of theft are complete.
However, police aren't releasing the findings because a criminal
investigation is pending.

"The criminal side is going to be wrapped up in the next week or
so," department spokesman Cpl. David Schiralli said. "We're probably
going to be pressing charges."

A new report in the Lancet on the "Adverse health effects of non-
medical cannabis use" has some wondering why this exceptionally
hazardous herb is becoming increasingly popular with young people,
"either in ignorance or defiance of its damaging effects on health."

Protesters planted hemp seeds on the lawn of DEA headquarters in
Virginia, and were promptly arrested.

Jack Herer is slowly recovering from the heart attack he suffered
following an impassioned speech he delivered at the Seattle Hemp
Fest.

The aptly named Massachusetts Joint Revenue Committee held hearings
to consider a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate cannabis.
Check out the video in "Hot Off The Net" below.

It is 40 years since cannabis unleashed the "flower power" revolution
of the 1960s, encouraging a generation in Europe and the US to "make
love not war". Young people at the time hoped their legacy would be
world peace. Instead, it has turned out to be a world of fuzzy dope-
heads.

In the intervening decades, the drug whose intoxicating effects have
been known for 4,000 years has been increasingly adopted by
adolescents and young adults across the globe.

Today, an estimated one in 25 adults of working age - 166 million
people around the world - has used cannabis to get high, either in
ignorance or defiance of its damaging effects on health. Now, the
extraordinary popularity of the drug is posing a significant public
health challenge, doctors say.

Writing in The Lancet, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland and
Louisa Degenhardt of the University of New South Wales, Australia, say
cannabis slows reaction times and increases the risk of accidents,
causes bronchitis, interferes with learning, memory and education and,
most seriously, may double the risk of schizophrenia. Yet these
effects have failed to dent its popularity.

"Since cannabis use was first reported over 40 years ago by US college
students, its recreational or non-medical use has spread globally,
first to high-income countries, and recently to low-income and middle-
income countries," they say.

Citing figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for 2006, they
say cannabis use is highest in the US, Australia and New Zealand
(where more than 8 per cent of the population indulge), followed by
Europe. But because Asia and Africa have bigger populations, they also
have the highest proportion of the world's cannabis users, accounting
for almost a third (31 per cent) and a quarter (25 per cent)
respectively.

You want to dig a garden, you need a shovel. You want to dig a
guerrilla garden of illegal hemp on the front lawn of Drug Enforcement
Administration headquarters and get arrested for the cameras, you need
a symbol.

Shortly before they all were happily handcuffed Tuesday, the farmers
took one look at what the activists had brought to dig with, and just
shook their heads.

The symbolic shovels were shiny, chrome-plated affairs, the kind for
turning the earth in a Washington photo op, stamped with slogans:
"Reefer Madness Will Be Buried." When the shovel blades were
experimentally pressed into the mulch outside the group's hotel, they
bent like toys.

"You'll have a real hard time getting through the grass," observed
Wayne Hauge, 51, a North Dakota farmer whose previous interactions
with police amount to a ticket for driving an overloaded truck of
lentils. "Not exactly the divot I was thinking of."

But never mind.

Time to leave for the demonstration, the protest, the blow against the
empire of DEA regulations.

They piled into a 1985 Mercedes-Benz painted the color of a Granny
Smith apple. Its diesel engine had been converted to run on waste
cooking oil supplied for free by a restaurant in Columbia Heights. For
the adventure, Adam Eidinger, communications director for the advocacy
group Vote Hemp and owner of the Mercedes, spiked the cooking grease
with waste hemp oil. He was wearing pants, shirt, socks and shoes all
made from hemp.

The hemp mobile purred over the Potomac River on the road to
Arlington.

Jack Herer, a leader in the modern marijuana legalization movement,
has been discharged from a Portland hospital nearly a month after a
Sept. 12 heart attack, and his family has moved him to a Eugene
nursing facility.

Herer, 70, of Lower Lake, Calif., had just delivered what for him was
a typical barn-burner of a speech promoting hemp at Portland's
Hempstalk festival when he collapsed. He was airlifted to Legacy
Emanuel Medical Center and was in critical but stable condition for
more than three weeks.

Herer had improved enough to be released from Emanuel and moved, said
Paul Stanford, a longtime friend who is executive director of The Hemp
and Cannabis Foundation in Portland.

"He is waking up and gazing appropriately when someone's talking,"
Stanford said Monday, "but he's not really communicating in any way."

The heavy-set Herer suffered a stroke in 2000, and for several years
after, he struggled to regain his speech and locomotion. Stanford said
that before Herer addressed the Sept. 12 festival at Portland's Kelley
Point Park, "Jack was telling everyone that he never felt better."

A Northampton Lawyer Brings A Bill To Tax And Regulate Pot To The
Statehouse.

In 1981, Dick Evans, a Northampton attorney and long-time advocate for
drug law reform, drafted a marijuana legalization bill "just to see
what one would look like," he said.

Evans got the bill before the state Legislature via the right to
petition, a law that allows citizens to file bills. And because he
found a legislator to file the bill on his behalf-improbably enough,
it was Andrew Card, who went on to serve as chief of staff to George
W. Bush but at the time was a progressive Republican state rep from
eastern Mass.-it was guaranteed a committee hearing.

The day of the hearing, Evans said, "I loaded a few friends in the car
and we drove down to Boston." When they arrived, they found the room
packed with anti-drug parents' groups and other opponents. Evans
offered his testimony in support of the bill, then the opponents
offered theirs.

"Then the chairman of the committee looked at his watch and said, 'I
think we heard enough. Let's put this to a vote. All in favor say
"Aye."'

"My friends and I jumped up and said 'Aye!'" Evans said. Then the
committee chair asked for those opposed to say "nay."

"The building shook," Evans recalled with a laugh. "Bang went the
gavel, and that was it for 28 years."

This week, Evans once again traveled to Boston to make the case for a
marijuana legalization bill he drafted, at an Oct. 14 hearing of the
Joint Committee on Revenue. Like the one he filed 28 years ago, this
bill calls for the regulation of commercial growing and sale of
marijuana, and would impose an excise tax on the product.

While Evans does not expect the bill to fast-track into law, he does
hope it will spark a healthy, honest public discussion about
marijuana, in a way that was not possible back in 1981.

While the "Conservative" minority government in Canada was hoping to
rush a harsh mandatory minimum drug bill through parliament, it
appears that the deliberative function of Canada's Senate is working
as designed. Senator Claude Nolin last week told conservative party
mouthpiece and Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, the Senate will put
the bill, C-15, "through 'rigorous' scrutiny," reported The Ottawa
Citizen.

Police in West Australia are smacking their lips at potential salary
and staffing increases as Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett
reaches for that old political standby: scapegoating cannabis users.
Framing the issue as indignation over "people caught with weapons or
drugs were being let off in court," Barnett introduced legislation
to strip probable cause rights from the citizens, allowing police to
stop and search anyone "without reason". The real target? Cannabis
users.

Last week Barnett "thrilled delegates," according to The Australian
newspaper, "by promising to also introduce legislation within days
to throw out ... 2003 drug laws, which allow people to grow two
cannabis plants per household without criminal charge." Whittling
away at the amount of cannabis needed to prosecute, the proposed
laws will call for prosecution for possession of more than 10 grams
of cannabis, down from the 30 grams adults are allowed to posses
currently. "Cannabis is not a harmless or soft drug," proclaimed the
Western Australian Premier. "Research continues to show that
cannabis can lead to a host of health and mental health problems
including schizophrenia, and can be a gateway to harder drugs."

Meanwhile in a Queensland Australia newspaper, retired Narcotics
Officer and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition member Norm Stamper
lays out a blunt fact about drugs: "people like their drugs and
don't appreciate the Government telling them they can't have them."
Prohibitionists need to quit lying about the effects of drugs. True:
"Mind and mood-altering drugs can cause serious damage to
adolescents' normal development," admits Stamper. "So can lies."

The drug bill sailed through the House of Commons earlier this year
after the Liberals teamed up with the Conservatives, despite
grumbling within Grit ranks that they were being told to support a
bad bill so they wouldn't be accused of being soft on crime.

The bill would also strip judges of their discretion on whether to
incarcerate drug traffickers, including offenders who grow and then
sell as few as five marijuana plants.

West Australian police will have the nation's toughest powers to
stop and search people under a plan, unveiled yesterday, which
removes the need for them to show any grounds for suspecting an
offence.

Premier Colin Barnett said it was intolerable that people caught
with weapons or drugs were being let off in court because police
could not establish that there were sufficient grounds to search
them.

He said legislation would be introduced within weeks to allow anyone
to be stopped and searched without reason in a bid to reclaim the
streets from thugs.

[snip]

He thrilled delegates by promising to also introduce legislation
within days to throw out the former Labor government's contentious
2003 drug laws, which allow people to grow two cannabis plants per
household without criminal charge.

Mr Barnett says the Government will introduce legislation this week
to repeal WA's Cannabis Control Act of 2003. He will also seek to
make changes to the 1981 Misuse of Drugs Act and the Young Offenders
Act of 1994, saying it will send a clear message that the Government
does not endorse illicit drug use.

Mr Barnett said the cannabis-related legislation was the first in a
series of steps the Government would take to send a clear anti-drugs
message to the community and toughen penalties for people who broke
the law through drug-related offences.

[snip]

"Cannabis is not a harmless or soft drug. Research continues to show
that cannabis can lead to a host of health and mental health
problems including schizophrenia, and can be a gateway to harder
drugs.

[snip]

The new cannabis-related laws will:

* Prosecute those in possession of more than 10g of cannabis. This
is a reduction from the previous Labor government's stance, which
saw those in possession of more than 30g prosecuted.

* See subsequent offences for possession being prosecuted as
criminal offences.

Prosecute people for cultivating cannabis plants. Under the previous
Labor government's regime, people could grow two cannabis plants per
person, per household without facing criminal charges.

Of all the noteworthy reasons offered for putting an end to the "War
on Drugs", the one that surely gets the least play is this: people
like their drugs and don't appreciate the Government telling them
they can't have them.

[snip]

We've told our kids that cannabis is a "gateway" drug. Smoke it and
you'll surely wind up face down in a urine-soaked alley, a needle
sticking out of the collapsed vein in your arm.

We've told them, by the very act of repealing alcohol prohibition in
the United States 76 years ago, that booze is safer than pot. We've
told them that those who use drugs are criminals, and those who
become addicted are "junkies" or "dope fiends". We've told them to
"just say no", surely inoculating them and their friends against any
foreseeable drug use.

The problem is that so much of what we've told our children is a
lie. And they know it.

[snip]

Mind and mood-altering drugs can cause serious damage to
adolescents' normal development. So can lies.

[snip]

I'm a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc),
an organisation of 13,000 present and former criminal justice
practitioners and allies. We've concluded that the drug war,
prosecuted with bogus claims and shrill propaganda, has made the
world much less safe for all, especially our youth.

Our agenda? End the drug war; replace prohibition with a regulatory
model; reverse the 7:1 ratio of funding for enforcement over
prevention and treatment, thereby reducing death, disease, crime,
and addiction; and support solid educational programs that help all
people, young and old, make informed judgments about what they
choose to put into their bodies.

The son of a respected rabbi, Harvard grad, and former Princeton
professor might seem like an unlikely advocate for legalizing marijuana.
But when you meet Ethan Nadelmann, it all makes a lot of sense.

Massachusetts Joint Revenue Committee Hearing on Marijuana
Legalization, Regulation, Taxation, and the right to grow your own for
personal, non commercial use with Keith Stroup (NORML), Bill Downing,
Steven Epstein, State Reps and Senators and others.

Fresh from the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) annual convention
last weekend in Washington, DC, a pair of real life farmers who want
to plant hemp farmers joined with hemp industry figures and spokesmen
to travel across the Potomac River to DEA headquarters in Arlington,
Virginia, where, in an act of civil disobedience, they took shovels to
the lawn and planted hemp seeds.

In its latest Treatment Episode Data set (TEDS) report, the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that the
criminal justice system was the largest single source of referrals to
substance abuse treatment, accounting for 37 percent of all admissions
(approximately 671,000 of the 1.8 million admissions).

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) recently introduced a bill, S.714, to create a
blue ribbon commission to look at the reasons we have so many people
behind bars in America.

We know the reason: drug prohibition.

Now we have an opportunity to make sure this important commission gets
off the ground and looks at the right issues. Please take one minute
to fill in your information below, edit the letter if you want, and
click to send this important message to your one U.S. House
representative, your two U.S. senators and President Barack Obama.
Then, tell your friends to do the same!

American Violet is an important and compelling film based on the real-
life incident in Hearne, Texas where a large segment of the African-
American population was busted on false drug charges in a massive
operation. One young single mother, with the help of the ACLU, brought
the house of cards down.

The emotional hysteria generated by any reference to marijuana usage
(illicit or medically authorized) is a fascinating
psychological-sociological phenomenon throughout the U.S. This
exaggerated reaction can be traced back to the 1930s when Harry
Anslinger, the head of the federal drug agency at the time, spent a
lot of effort castigating marijuana usage. It is truly amazing that
this perception lingers today.

In almost a half-century of forensic pathology practice, having
performed 17,000 autopsies, I have never attributed a death directly
to a marijuana overdose. I have reviewed more than twice that number
of cases signed out by other forensic pathologists in other
jurisdictions, and I have never seen a death certificate listing
marijuana overdose as the cause of death.

"Acute combined drug toxicity" is a growing cause of death in our
country, not limited to celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Anna
Nicole Smith or Michael Jackson. It is my fervent hope that the
federal and state agencies charged with the responsibility of
controlling the improper use of drugs and chemical compounds will
deem it necessary to concentrate on this kind of drug abuse, with at
least the same level of passion that they have used in trying to
prevent patients from receiving a physician-prescribed therapeutic
dose of a comparatively benign drug such as marijuana.

Last month, the U.S. denied that they were setting up military bases
in Colombia, ( see http://tinyurl.com/mwtcvv ), claiming that the new
arrangement to lease up to seven military bases in Colombia was simply
for "fighting drug traffickers."

This didn't pass the smell test for Venezuela's Chavez and Bolivia's
Morales, who were concerned about having these military bases in their
back yards. (see http://tinyurl.com/yg3hmjq )

Now Evo Morales has announced that Bolivia plans to buy six military
aircraft "to fight drug traffickers." See http://tinyurl.com/yf3g4wy )

"Last week we issued a supreme decree to . acquire six K-8 aircraft
from China," said Morales in a speech in La Paz to mark the 52nd
anniversary of the Bolivian Air Force.

"The aircraft purchase is aimed at the fight against drug trafficking
and not . any arms race," he added.

This, after the U.S. blocked them from purchasing Czech planes.

And.

Morales' main regional ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is also
buying Chinese K-8 to be used to pursue cocaine flights. They replace
a purchase of Brazilian Super Tucanos blocked by a US arms embargo.

Sure is handy to have that drug war, isn't it?

Pete Guither is the author of Drug WarRant (
http://www.drugwarrant.com ) a weblog at the front lines of the drug
war, where this piece was first presented.

"As long as there's a disconnect with the federal law, it's guaranteed
there will be problems along the way." - Dr. Alfredo Vigil, New
Mexico's secretary of health, on starting state-sanctioned medical
cannabis dispensaries.

DS Weekly is one of the many free educational services DrugSense
offers our members. Watch this feature to learn more about what
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Cannabis/Hemp content selection and analysis, Hot Off The Net
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Analysis comments represent the personal views of editors, not
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